The Stranger You Seek (7 page)

I switched on a floor lamp and sank onto my couch with the letter.

The light from Peachtree Street casts a stained glow over my loft at night and I love the warmth of it and the marquee at the Fox across the street outlined in fat, round bulbs. But tonight my home seemed eerily dark and silent as I sat with notebook and pen and this uninvited guest, another letter from a murderer.

When I answered my phone an hour later, Rauser said, “You speaking to me? I’ll make the coffee if you’ll let me come up.”

He had called from the lobby and appeared two minutes later in Levis and a royal blue T-shirt with APD embroidered on the left sleeve in bright yellow, looking like he needed a nap and a shave. He went straight to the kitchen and dumped espresso beans in the coffee grinder. He knew where to find things here. We’d both spent a lot of time in the other’s home.

“Coffee,” he said, and put our cups down on the coffee table, sat, turned toward me, and put his hand on mine. “Thanks, Street. I just need to talk this through with somebody who understands this shit.”

I nodded. What else could I have possibly said to that?

He crossed an ankle over his knee and slurped the coffee he’d loaded with cream and sugar. “I don’t think this guy’d be letting off warning shots if there was time to find David,” he said flatly. “But we’re sure as hell gonna try. I don’t care if we have to look at every tape from every building in this city, we’re gonna catch this bastard.”

We were quiet for a moment. I thought about what that arduous process would be, about the time and resources it would gobble up, about some unlucky cop from each shift sitting for hours watching surveillance tapes, grainy and indistinct. And what exactly would they look for? Someone shaking hands on an elevator, walking the halls and talking? And then what? Spending hours, perhaps days, running down the names of those individuals, getting statements? The killer was putting out just enough information to keep APD chasing their tails.

Three days, Lieutenant. Tick-tock
.

“Maybe the entire scenario is bullshit and he’s just playing us. The bullshit factor’s high with these guys.” Rauser was making notes on his own copy of the letter, chewing on his pen. “That’s the problem with killers. They’re all a bunch of goddamn liars. Maybe there’s an elevator and maybe not. Maybe there’s a David, maybe not. We have to run it down, though, every bit of it.” Rauser had already pulled together more investigators than had ever been assigned to a task force in Atlanta, something the mayor had announced proudly and the media had criticized as excessive spending. Rauser had also set up twenty-four-hour tip lines. The most expensive task force ever wasn’t getting results, or so the reports claimed.

“Something to think about,” I said carefully. “He may have a good understanding of what this means in terms of manpower.” My heart rate
spiked a little. Was the person killing and bragging about it in letters to Rauser familiar with law enforcement? And if so, how familiar?

Rauser looked at me, then shot me with his forefinger and thumb. “Good point,” he said, and called one of his detectives. “Williams, you and Bevins start checking out every denied application for the police academy in the last fifteen years,” he said into the phone. “Run ’em down. All of them. Cop wannabes on file,
CSI
freaks, find them too and check their alibis. And I want you to personally and very quietly, please, get a list of everybody we’ve had disciplined because of excessive force, sexual harassment issues, abusive language or sexual assaults, anyone on probation or paid leave with that kind of stuff pending, I want their files on my desk by noon.”

Rauser took the crime scene photos from his case and spread them around my coffee table. “Guy’s obviously intelligent,” he said, arranging them in groups from first to last murder—Anne Chambers, Bob Shelby, Elicia Richardson, Lei Koto. “FBI talked about him being a frustrated underachiever. Is that what you see?”

“No,” I answered. “I see a perfectionist. Someone careful and focused who wants to appear brilliant, who wants to impress others. The two letters tell us that. I don’t see some guy who still lives in his mama’s basement.”

Rauser nodded his agreement. “So I’ve got a potential victim named David and a goddamn elevator, that’s what I got from this shit.” He thumped the letter with his forefinger.

“Well, there are a couple other things to get from it. For one, this person would be extremely controlling in life,” I said. “Family members, lovers, coworkers, would have experienced this on some level. Also, the sadistic behaviors probably need acting out with sexual partners even in the cooling-off periods. He probably pays for this or finds them in S/M communities where there’s curiosity play with pain and bondage, but he wouldn’t like his partners having boundaries or using safe words. People like this get bad reputations in communities where it’s controlled. I’d start asking questions there. He’s probably also looking at websites that help him fuel the domination fantasy. He’s careful, though. The whole social veneer idea, it’s really true, Rauser. On the surface, I think he is what he says he is. Extremely good at the game.”

“All the other victims were fairly easy access, but if David has a family
and wears expensive suits, it’ll be different. He’ll have a security system, maybe a nanny or a stay-at-home wife, a dog or two.”

“Elicia Richardson had a security system,” I said, and picked up a picture of her lying facedown with her legs spread, bruised and bitten. Dark-stained oak floors surrounded the Chinese rug where she’d been left like an abandoned rag doll. Savage bite marks covered her shoulders and inner thighs, stab wounds on the thighs and buttocks, on her sides and lower back. I imagined him walking into her home. Had she been expecting him? I closed my eyes and tried to be there, see Elicia in life, through his eyes. I ring the bell and wait. She’s pretty. She smiles. Does she know me? She wants me here. Why? I step into her home. I’m nervous, but then my lungs fill with the air she’s breathing and I feel the power. I know I own her now just like I own the doorway I’ve stepped through and the air we’re sharing and the rug under my feet. All I can think about is when, when will I hit her that first time? I like the blitz. I like the surprise. I like seeing her plead while I get out my wire and my knife.

“Yeah, but the security system wasn’t activated,” Rauser objected. “Because she opened the door for the creepy sonofabitch just like the other three. She lived alone, though. David doesn’t.”

“He won’t take David at home. He’s stepping out of that box, which makes him even more dangerous.”

“We’re looking into the bisexual thing. But, truth is, it’s the most closeted community out there. Lot of guys might want it, but they don’t necessarily advertise that. We’re hoping David does or the killer does. We’re canvassing bars—straight, gay, S/M—questioning hustlers, male and female.”

“This is not about sexual preference or sexual attraction,” I said, and thought about all the violent serial cases I’d worked with the Bureau. “It’s about power.”

“How do I find him?” Rauser asked. “How do we get to David in time?”

“Release the letter,” I answered.

I
felt like I’d been out jogging all night. Rauser stayed until almost six. I was supposed to serve a restraining order at nine. Normally, these things aren’t scheduled, but I got lucky on this one. The target, one William LaBrecque, had been forced to agree to church counseling sessions and to accept the documents I intended to hand him, a restraining order he’d dodged from the sheriff for weeks, in order for the State to consider supervised visitations. Easy money.

I found him in the chapel, sitting ramrod straight, staring ahead. A carpenter, I knew from his file, and a strong block of a man. William LaBrecque didn’t seem particularly happy to see me. The feeling was mutual. I had not been inside a church in fifteen years.

“Don’t you dare hand that to me in a house of God!” He practically hissed at me. His top lip curled.

“Look, we both know you have to take this or you’ll never get to see your kid, so don’t give me the house-of-God crap,” I whispered. “Take it or I’ll leave it sitting here. Either way, you’ve been served, Mr. LaBrecque.”

Uh-oh
. I was beginning to think we might have a problem. A lovely crimson rose up from his neck and a bulging blue vein in his temple started doing the Macarena.

“I’ll just leave it,” I whispered.

“Screw you,” he snarled, and quite unexpectedly grabbed my wrist
hard as I tried to squeeze past him in the pew. I didn’t like his hands on me and I didn’t trust his eyes, glossy and lit up now like lava. So much for the house-of-God thing.

“Hey.”
I twisted my wrist free. “I’m just the messenger here, pal. You knew this was coming. Your pastor made the arrangements. I don’t think a big ole scene in church is going to help your case.”

“You know why that bitch lawyer and the pastor wanted us to meet in the church?” LaBrecque asked. “So I wouldn’t be tempted to cut your Chink ass into little pieces and stuff you in the fucking sewer.”

Oh boy
.

That was my morning. Maybe later I could poke myself in the eye three or four hundred times just for fun.

T
he sun is streaming in through windows. The room is quiet as the killer leans back and reaches for the iPhone. There’s video there, video of the black lawyer and video of the Asian bitch, the fussy mother hen cooking stinking cabbage for her son. That one was a favorite. Lei Koto on her knees begging and pleading. No dignity at all.

The killer smiled and slipped a hand into expensively tailored pants, and switched on the video of Lei Koto.
Everyone needs a release now and then
.